by Amina Gautier… When the blood calls, you must answer. It sings in your veins, fills the drums of your ears, entwines itself in the coiffure of your curls, and always it surges, surges, surges. The blood calls your daughter’s name. The blood sings of the bier that was meant to be her bower, chanting…

by Seth Fried… “In the seventh grade, I starred in a play written by my school’s gym teacher. That year, Mr. Whitley had bullied the school board into letting him teach a section of drama so that they would be forced to raise his salary on a technicality.” Read the whole frog-eating story at the…

by Jon Conley… Watercooler talk, Mitz was saying that she went to the dentist yesterday and that he was treating her as gingerly as possible because he knew what had happened. What had happened? We too wanted to know. He was a drunk—or maybe that was Joni’s story. I had just read a Lucia Berlin…

Come with us back to 1964… National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody is an American humor book that was first published in 1973. It was a spin-off from National Lampoon Magazine. The book was a parody of a high school yearbook from the early 1960s…

by Felipe Philly… The year was 2075 and the problem with illegals was only getting worse. Illegals taking jobs; illegals committing crimes; illegals sucking up government resources and contributing nothing to society. The year was 2075 and the country had had enough. The crackdown was on. There was a great wall in the country. It…

by Kurt Vonnegut – a Kilgore Trout story… “In the beginning there was absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing” he said. “But nothing implies something, just as up implies down and sweet implies sour, as man implies woman and drunk implies sober and happy implies sad. I hate to tell you this, friends and neighbors,…

by Pussey-whipped Philly… . “I’m proud to say: I am now officially a member of the Me Too movement. I know I’m a man, but men can be members too. It’s not gender that determines eligibility, it’s understanding.” Me Too! is the latest in the Flashbytes series from worst-selling author Philip Loyd. Not…

Excerpt… “I was once picked up by the police on Fatty Arbuckle’s front lawn. Of course, by then Fatty—who preferred to be called Roscoe—had moved on. Arbuckle died in 1933. And this was the mid-eighties, before the dawn of the Crack Era. Street dealers dotted that no-longer upscale strip of Adams Boulevard, near downtown Los…

by Extraterrestrially Philly… On June 4, 2020, NASA received a signal from outer space like no other before. After careful deliberation, it was agreed that the signal was indeed from intelligent life not of this world. What did it say? Just one word: Dallas. Dallas: A Close Encounter, is the latest in the Flashbytes series…

by Josh Karp… You may have seen the new movie on Netflix. Now, read the book… In the 1950s, Chagrin Falls, Ohio, was the kind of place where Americans believed that Father Knows Best patriarch Jim Anderson could raise Kitten, Bud, and Princess in a big fine home with total comfort and domestic bliss…

by Charles Bukowski… Henry rose wide-eyed, as if in a trance, and flung the door open, forgetting his nakedness. He stood there transfixed in thought for some time, but it was obvious to her that nobody was therein his state of undress there would have been quite a commotion or, at the very least, some…